When it comes to boosting grades and encouraging student engagement, the pen may be mightier than the laptop.

University professors and education experts across Canada are getting behind the idea of limiting students’ use of laptops during lectures, which many argue have become a distracting presence in modern lecture halls.

The answer, some suggest, is the trusty pen-and-paper method…

Before introducing the laptop moratorium, Thagard conducted his own unscientific research. He asked a graduate student to sit in class and oversee exactly what students were doing on their laptops.

He found that about 85 per cent of students were doing things unrelated to the lesson – surfing on Facebook, YouTube or cruising the web.